Andy asked me this week if I thought I was growing. It was an interesting question to consider. There have been several difficult circumstances which have caused me unease this week. I’m not sure why, but after weeks of not being troubled, I feel as though I have been inundated with difficult information to process and react to.
Early in the week I was talking with an acquaintance who works for a large NGO. We were discussing their work arrangements and the entitlements that go along with the Job. I have to say I didn’t understand or couldn’t reconcile what I was hearing with the image the organisation presents. Later in the week I was talking to another national that had worked with this NGO also. I asked him to tell me about the good work they do, hoping his stories would confirm the image that the organisations PR team paint. I left that discussion feeling physically sick, as the reality of what goes on behind the scenes so drastically contradicts the image portrayed. I don’t know how to respond to the immensity of what I was told. It started to make sense why an NGO doing charitable work would need a PR team in the first place. Lord give me wisdom. I attended my second funeral in as many weeks this week. I didn’t know the man who had died. He was the uncle of a friend I have made. I didn’t feel as uneasy lining up in Muslim prayer lines to pray for God to receive Him and have mercy on him. It didn’t bother me seeing the cloth wrapped body buried in a shallow grave. I wasn’t even overly shocked when the grave digger dug up an old human leg bone, the remains of someone randomly buried on the site long ago before it had become a cemetery in its current form. The crowd waiting didn’t seem to mind either. The bone was dropped back in the bottom of the hole, some sand covering it and the new body placed on top, entombed with a layer of sticks and covered with sand. What I found difficult was how many children had been buried since I was there only a couple of weeks before. Presumably from malaria, the new graves, marked only with a stick, were at least half children. In fact while we were watching the grave digger finish the hole for the man we were burying, 5 other men approached with a wrapped small woven mat, less than a metre long, and carefully placed it on the ground. Another baby who’s mother is at home grieving, as the men do what needs to be done. What do you do as you see the countless new mounds of earth, each one representing a precious gift from God, knowing that for a few dollars or a mosquito net, none of them would be there? Lord give me wisdom. This week the government has started to ‘clean up the city’. Thousands of small shops line almost every road, the owners only source of income, selling everything imaginable. Many have probably started the shops many years ago by buying the few square metres of land from the local Mayor and then paying the daily and yearly tax that is required. Imagine for a moment, the ingenuity and the initiative of men trying to feed themselves in a country without welfare; in many ways, these men shame the very core of our western welfare reliance. For instance you come back to your car, the windscreen having been covered with cardboard to protect it from the sun. With a beaming smile and the pride of initiative the youth removes the cardboard and opens your door, with no guarantee of payment. I love giving these guys a few cents to their delight. But this week it was announced that all shops on all major roads would be bulldozed to present a more beautified city. The owners didn’t believe it would happen, many left their stock in the shops. At midnight the police moved in and so did the machinery. In two days it has been reported that over 4000 shops were levelled and removed, many still full of stock. There have been wild scenes of fighting, and even more uncommon here, grown men weeping as they consider what they will do or where they will go now that everything has been taken. Men that have forged something from nothing, taken welfare from no one. Where do you direct your emotion as you see this and are powerless to help or intervene or provide any reason to the destruction? Lord give me wisdom. As I was about to attend the funeral of my friends uncle, my other friend told me that his neighbours wife had just dropped dead of a heart attack. She was 40, had 8 children, was the only wife to a tailor earning a meagre wage. She was buried after we left the cemetery, attended only by men, 4 hours after she died. The next day my friend told me he was tired, no one had much sleep. The 9 month old had cried all night, the other children also crying out for their mother. I offered to buy the child some baby formula as he was still feeding when his mother had died. We went to visit, giving the milk and also a sack of rice. In typical fashion there were no tears. The husband was stoic and very hospitable. The children were as always interested in the white person, the baby soothed with a sugary drink. My thoughts were of the days ahead. Who will care for the children? Who will cook the meals? Who will show them love in a country where perhaps the only love they are shown is from their mother? Lord give me wisdom. On top of these issues our family continues to face health issues. Andy has had many migraines for the last couple of weeks, one leaving her bed ridden and in pain for three days. Sickness and pain is never pleasant, but it is different dealing with a chronic illness over many years, with no ability to control the pain or know when or if it will end. It leaves primarily Andy, but also the family feeling tired and having the feeling of never being able to ‘catch up’. Lord give us wisdom. So the question asked was ‘am I growing’? In many ways, the attributes of growth I might consider, eg having answers or good doctrine for the above mentioned difficulties, provide little outward example of growth - and yet still I have a deep unshaken hope and belief that amongst the turmoil, God is at work and that He is Good. My heart resonates with that of Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. I know it is not me that is facing most of the hardship, but I long that those facing hopelessness would know these same truths that I have come to believe. Even when all is laid bare, when it seems as though there is no hope, there is a God who loves us and wants to give us His strength to endure the brokenness of this world. “We are hard pressed on every side, perplexed but not crushed, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. …..Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what Is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. 2 Corinthians 4:8-18. My prayer is that I am growing in my hunger to make these truths known. I can’t stop much of what I see and experience, I’ve tried. But God is able to do immeasurably more than we can imagine, if only we know who He is and trust in Him. I go out to show and tell that truth in any way I can.
2 Comments
There are more kids in Niger than adults. It is currently the fastest growing population in the world, which is scary given that it is also the poorest country in the world, (according to HDI) and therefore completely unable to accommodate such a growth rate. They can't even accommodate their current population, and the education system is unbelievably deprived - teachers that go away for months on end leaving their classes completely unattended, for example... kids the same age as Belle and Hunter who have no idea what their ABC's, or colours or shapes or numbers are. During the fasting months of Ramadan, the parents often forget to feed their kids because they don't have to prepare meals for the adults, and they are so tired themselves. There are no playgrounds or parks or soccer clubs... they work hard from very young, cooking, cleaning, running errands, taking care of younger siblings and babies, girls are given in marriage between 11-14 years old. Kids aren't allowed to ask questions to their parents because culturally that is very disrespectful. And there is a huge amount of time where they are just completely unsupervised and left to the survival of the fittest amongst a band of other neglected children. This is all off the top of my head. If I gave it more time I could list several other saddening facts. Jesus loves children SO much that I wonder if that's one of the reasons He loves Niger so much. Among all these tragic aspects of kids lives here, the worst is that those children do not know that they are loved by Him. The children have always been on my heart since I arrived, but the burden continues to grow, and I continue to wonder how to be Jesus to them and what He would have me do and say.
One thing that has been a mantle since I arrived is the verse "You are the God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13). Wetry not to leave any child unnoticed. Even if it is as simple as bonjour with eye contact - they know that we have seen them, we notice them, they are worthy of our attention. You would be surprised for many how unusual this is. They are so often ignored that their reactions are sometimes hilarious. Though most often the response is a huge smile, there are also faces that turn pale and don't know what to say, they look behind them wondering if they are really the one being addressed, and some literally run away because they don't know what to do with even a morcel of love and attention. I once heard someone say that if you don't have a heart for the poor or the lost, you have to question whether you really know Jesus. I feel like adding children to that list. |
AuthorWe are Brad, Andy, Hunter and Belle. Hoping to keep you connected! Archives
May 2019
Click to set custom HTML
|